


Light on the Edge of the World

by Sholio



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Living Together, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 00:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6064243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha doesn't sleep much. So, in the dawn, she lies quietly and keeps watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light on the Edge of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



> Post-reveal edit: This takes place in the same universe as [this Fandom Stocking snippet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5742373/chapters/13232188), in which Steve, Bucky, and Natasha buy a house together in upstate New York.

In the long hours as night gives over to dawn, she lies awake and thinks about things.

Natasha has never slept much. Like so many other things about herself, she can't untangle the complex threads of nature and nurture, and does her best not to try. She sleeps in REM cycles, about an hour and a half at a time, and then she jerks fully awake in seconds, and she'll be wide awake for hours. She gets maybe four or five hours of sleep in any given twenty-four hour period, and doesn't feel any lack. She can't remember a time when she hasn't slept that way, but she also can't remember a time in her life when it wasn't necessary to be constantly vigilant, wide awake and functional at any given hour of the day or night.

Until now.

Until now, but those habits are written in her bones by now. She doesn't think she could ever adapt to sleeping through the night. For most of her adult life, she's simply paid little attention to day or night, at least in terms of setting her personal schedule. Now that she's actually living with other people, and trying to adapt her schedule to other people, she starts off hiding it. She goes to bed when the rest of their little household settles down ... then wakes up an hour and a half later, makes herself a cup of tea or pours a stiff drink, and goes off quietly to do something that won't wake up the rest of them.

But slowly the lie becomes, if not actual reality, then something approximating it. She does actually feel herself settling into a quiet evening mode when Steve and Bucky begin to settle down for the night. Some nights she still feels the need to leave quietly and go for a long run, or turn on the light in her room and carefully clean all her weapons. But other nights she's content to just make tea and read, or simply lie awake and let her brain idle as best she can, while her body settles down for another sleep cycle.

And sometimes she has company. Bucky's sleep-wake cycle is, for lack of a better word, weird. He goes in long cycles: awake for days, then crashing for twelve or more hours of twitchy, nervous sleep when the smallest sound can wake him up. At first, she and Steve try to leave him alone, tiptoeing around or finding pretexts to not be in the house, since something as simple as turning the page of a book can wake him. But it turns out that the one thing that _doesn't_ wake him up is having someone else in the bed with him. Actually, he seems to sleep deeper that way, or at least he can more easily settle down again when something like a distant car on the road or the normal creaking and popping of a house at night wakes him up. 

And, for whatever reason, he sleeps better with her in the bed than with Steve in the bed. Natasha suspects that this is because Steve is an inveterate sleep cuddler. He can't seem to help it. He rolls over and latches on. And more often than not, that wakes up Bucky. Bucky _likes_ it, as far as she can tell; it's just ... not so great for an uninterrupted eight or twelve hours of sleep. 

Natasha, on the other hand, likes her space, and except for waking up with a jerk at the end of her biological clock's allotted hour and a half, she sleeps very, very still. She knows from experience that she can sleep in a tree or on a window ledge without falling off, and she is perfectly content to curl up on one side of the bed while Bucky sleeps on the other side. She can (usually) slip out of bed silently enough not to wake him, but increasingly, it just seems like more trouble than it's worth. She is happy enough to lie there and listen to his breathing and the sounds of Steve elsewhere in the house, or sometimes the sound of Steve breathing in the same bed when they're all three sleeping together (and, periodically, rolling over and trying to sleep-limpet some unfortunate victim).

Technically they all have rooms of their own; it was one of the prerequisites, for all three of them, in moving in together. What surprises Natasha is how much time they actually spend together, even at night. She had imagined they'd spend most of their time in their own space, coming together occasionally for sparring or sex (the latter in various combinations; they've yet to have all three of them in the same bed when anything sexual is happening, mostly because she and Steve are not actually sleeping together, beyond a little playing around that hasn't gone anywhere for either of them). But in reality, it seems that when one of them is doing something, at least one of the others will quietly wander in and find something else to do in the vicinity. So Natasha gets used to reading with Bucky leaning against her leg, or she just happens to want her cup of tea in the kitchen while Steve is cooking.

It starts to become a rare thing, to sleep alone. Which means accommodating other people's sleep schedules. Which, she finds, is less of a burden than she always thought it would be. If she's bored, she can get up and find something to do. They won't mind. But there is a meditative calm in lying here in bed, warm and the closest thing she knows to safe, knowing that if she wants human contact she can reach out and find it.

In these long gray dawns, she keeps watch.


End file.
